Bridges for Newborns

The Bridges for Newborns (Bridges) program aims to increase the proportion of Orange County newborns that are insured and have a health care home. The Bridges program seeks to ensure that newborns are linked with health care coverage, receive their first well-baby checkup, and up-to-date immunizations. Families receive a Kit for New Parents and information on the benefits of breastfeeding.

Bridges is a network of Orange County hospitals, Family Resource Centers, and community agencies working together with the California Children and Families Commission of Orange County (the Commission). The Bridges network is committed to improving the lives of Orange County children by helping to provide a healthy start to newborns so they are healthy and ready for success in school by age 5.

Parent education and awareness gained from the book, What To Do When Your Child Gets Sick, has been shown to benefit hospitals with a 58 percent reduction in unnecessary trips to the ER and a 42 percent reduction in clinic visits. The book is contained in the Orange County Kit for New Parents, which is distributed free of charge through the Bridges program at participating hospitals. Parents benefit by becoming more educated about their children's health and having a 42 percent decrease in missed work days and a 29 percent decrease in missed school days for their children. (Statistics from The Anderson School at UCLA and Johnson & Johnson.)

Bridges hospitals screen mothers of newborns to identify factors that may prevent the newborn from thriving. Families with identified risk factors are referred to community or hospital-based service providers for ongoing follow up, including home visitation. Case managers then conduct an extensive assessment of these families and work with the parents to access health care and promote the establishment of a health care home, identify their specific barriers, and help them develop practices that support normal growth and development. Case managers refer families with more extensive and complex needs to appropriate community resources.

As co-manager with Orangewood Children's Foundation, HASC sets protocol and guidelines for best practices, monitors program activities, coordinates data collection and reporting, establishes referral relationships with community-based organizations, facilitates continuing education for staff, manages distribution of the Kit for New Parents, and provides ongoing day-to-day support to participating hospitals.

Bridges is funded by Proposition 10 Tobacco Tax revenues and managed by the Commission on a renewable basis. At the state level, the organization that funds Bridges is known as First 5 California.